I am writing dressed in gold with a red stripe down my forehead in tribute to my favourite chocolate bar.

But I do not want any of you for a second to think that my name change will undermine my integrity. I will still be a serious professional. It is just that I will look stupid and have a silly name.

That is similar to what the world No 3 tennis player Maria Sharapova is asking us to accept next week. She is apparently rushing to change her surname to Sugarpova in time for the US Open, the final grand slam of the year. This is in order to publicise her own line of sweets, which she launched last year and that come in 15 varieties with names such as ‘flirty’, ‘sassy’ and ‘smitten’.

If a Florida court grants the name change, then she is likely to take to the court wearing her company logo – a pouting pair of red lips.

The story is so outlandish that I cannot believe it is true. But it says something for the state of women’s tennis in general, and for Sharapova’s public image in particular, that it might just be.

Imagine Andy Murray striding out at Flushing Meadows newly named as Murray Mint? Or Roger Federer changing his name to Roger Rolex (for which he is already ambassador) and dressing head to toe in silver? They would be laughed off the court.

Yet somehow, the women’s game is regarded as a perfect launchpad for fashion lines and confectionery – which rather undermines its proper place as a forum for the kind of gruelling contest that has driven the wonderful Marion Bartoli to hang up her racket just as she fulfilled her dream of winning a grand slam.

It is true that names have sometimes been troublesome in women’s tennis.

The Women’s Tennis Association and the women’s tour itself owes its foundation to Gladys Heldman, publisher of World Tennis magazine, and nine women led by Billie Jean King. Inspired by feminism and the mood of the times, in 1970, as part of their campaign for equal pay, these players – Rosie Casals and Judy Tegart Dalton among them – broke with the men’s game and started their own tour.

It was a great step forward, a blow for women’s rights from which today’s players still reap the benefits. But the tour they founded was sponsored by Virginia Slims – a cigarette brand deliberately targetted at young girls. Admittedly that was then, when John Player and Marlboro were also major sponsors of all kinds of rough and tough male sporting activity.

But now seeing a player such as Sharapova, once regarded as a beacon of the women’s game, voluntarily give up respect in order to promote a brand is as sickening as over-eating her sweets. When she shot to prominence by winning Wimbledon in 2004, at the age of 17, she looked like the girl who had everything. She was beautiful, clever and truly excellent at her sport.

She looked set to dominate the women’s game, and sure enough the world No 1 ranking, and two more grand slams followed. Now she is as famous for her modelling assignments and her high-profile boyfriends as she is for a tennis.

Fashion is one thing, but changing your name to peddle a ‘premium line of gummy candies’ is worse. What kind of message does that send to her fans?

That eating sweets is good for you? That refined sugar, shaped like lips and brightly-coloured, is somehow a desirable thing to eat? It cuts against any notion that encouraging young girls to take up tennis might actually improve their fitness.

It is not as if she needs the money. For the ninth year running, Sharapova has been named as the world’s highest paid female athlete. She is also a UN ambassador and clearly does a lot of good work. But if she really wants to be an inspirational role model, she should drop the gimmicks and play her sport. By seeking to do otherwise, she is harming not only her own image but the women’s game itself.

How can women argue that they deserve equal pay when they seem to hold their own sport in contempt? How can they demand respect when they voluntarily sacrifice it? Using tennis as a vehicle to flog sweets leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.